What if the Persians conquered Greece?

Esopo

Banned
Oh, I don't. I was just noting that in my case if I did so *my* long-dead corpses were the victors over the actual Roman Empire. :p

But seriously, I fail to see how your argument that Persian-ruled Greece could not produce philosophy is workable. Are you arguing that rule by a Middle Eastern state would deprive Greece because Athens and Sparta have the only real Greeks that matter? :confused:

The same roman empire they so deeply admired and which still today their descendants consider uncomparably better than the persian empire?;)
About the topic, i said i would have stopped discussing this, and i keep my word. If you wanna know my idea, you can read my previous, countless, posts. Its all there.
 
The same roman empire they so deeply admired and which still today their descendants consider uncomparably better than the persian empire?;)
About the topic, i said i would have stopped discussing this, and i keep my word. If you wanna know my idea, you can read my previous, countless, posts. Its all there.

I have read those posts and I have no idea what your idea is, beyond generalizations about Asiatic despotism that are frankly put reliant on obsolete ideas that modern research discredited, reliant on a definition of absolutism that characterizes no human society that has ever existed or ever will exist, and reliant on a view of Greece that bears an in-name-only resemblance to the real Greece.
 

Esopo

Banned
I have read those posts and I have no idea what your idea is, beyond generalizations about Asiatic despotism that are frankly put reliant on obsolete ideas that modern research discredited, reliant on a definition of absolutism that characterizes no human society that has ever existed or ever will exist, and reliant on a view of Greece that bears an in-name-only resemblance to the real Greece.

Then, you red it very bad :/
 
The Republic's conquests destablized it and the result of this was civil wars between overmighty generals that turned into the empire. Thus the Republic conquered Greece, the Empire ruled Greece.

By the definition closest to your argument (that the Roman Republic's final chain of civil wars started with Gaius Marius-Gracchus was a populist, but I can't define his fall as a civil war), the Republic ruled Greece for fifty years and absorbed its culture quite thoroughly. (Not sure if that counts as "using the territory", though.) That's longer than the colonies of some latter day European empires (much of the German Empire, for example.) The Empire ruled it for longer, yes, but that's a good generation of people under Roman leadership before the SPQR starts to crumble.

But this argument is useless to the core of the thread. It is undeniable that Greeks varied. I just think that an invasion is likely to result in bad things being done to Athens (the destruction of a city-and, we can't forget, its citizen army), one of the "freer" Greek city states and the one which produced the greatest philosophers of the Greeks. At least, the ones we remember today. This will put a major dent in Greek philosophy.

So, guys, as the title of the thread is "What if the Persians conquered Greece?", rather than "Grudge match of Esopo vs. his critics", what sort of beliefs could emerge instead? I remember something buried in the arguments about there being less xenophobia and snobbery to do with other peoples, and a greater Greek unity.

(Which, personally, I disagree with. When after the Persian wars people wrote of the Greeks vs. the foreigners, they damn well knew who they were talking about in terms of an identity, if note a unified political system. The Persian wars helped define it. And no, I can't provide any examples. Sorry guys. It's a fact I "just know" from some book I've read.)
 
By the definition closest to your argument (that the Roman Republic's final chain of civil wars started with Gaius Marius-Gracchus was a populist, but I can't define his fall as a civil war), the Republic ruled Greece for fifty years and absorbed its culture quite thoroughly. (Not sure if that counts as "using the territory", though.) That's longer than the colonies of some latter day European empires (much of the German Empire, for example.) The Empire ruled it for longer, yes, but that's a good generation of people under Roman leadership before the SPQR starts to crumble.

But this argument is useless to the core of the thread. It is undeniable that Greeks varied. I just think that an invasion is likely to result in bad things being done to Athens (the destruction of a city-and, we can't forget, its citizen army), one of the "freer" Greek city states and the one which produced the greatest philosophers of the Greeks. At least, the ones we remember today. This will put a major dent in Greek philosophy.

So, guys, as the title of the thread is "What if the Persians conquered Greece?", rather than "Grudge match of Esopo vs. his critics", what sort of beliefs could emerge instead? I remember something buried in the arguments about there being less xenophobia and snobbery to do with other peoples, and a greater Greek unity.

(Which, personally, I disagree with. When after the Persian wars people wrote of the Greeks vs. the foreigners, they damn well knew who they were talking about in terms of an identity, if note a unified political system. The Persian wars helped define it. And no, I can't provide any examples. Sorry guys. It's a fact I "just know" from some book I've read.)

I'm dating the civil wars to Marius and Sulla, who began what Caesar Augustus finished. That being said, I think that the Greeks probably develop both science further and the tools of imperialism by virtue of access to the greater markets of Asia, and Persia winds up inflicting self-destruction by virtue of short-circuiting Greece's tendencies to war amongst itself and instead enabling Greece to gain in power and in wealth.
 
Awilla:

And yet, in the long run, so what? Let's say we butterfly away everything that happened in philosophy from the Greeks after the Persian Wars. Why won't other Greeks than the Athenians, influenced by a broader and deeper contact with the East, develop philosophers equal to anything in OTL?

Different, yes, but not worse.

And for that matter, why is Persia going to treat Athens so badly? Even if it is seen as the center of the resistance to Persian overlordship, refusing to let the city be rebuilt doesn't really serve any productive purpose towards making the area governable, which would be the long term goal here.

And "this is what happens to those who cross us" isn't really a major trait of Achamenid governance.
 
To be fair, I may have confused your arguments on Asiatic despotism with those of Andreas.

I cannot remember any comments of mine on the "asiatic" despotism, except that the despotisms of Seleukids and Ptolemies were something very different than the typical Greek political thought of the time...

it's nice to see everyone has cooled down :)
 
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